Wow! What an action packed two days at the Seattle CasualConnect and IGDA summit so far! I’ve met far more people already than I had expected to during the whole conference, and met up with friends and colleagues I haven’t seen in a while, and I still have two days to go! Things are really hopping and there are a lot of very talented and very cool people attending. It’s going to take me weeks to follow up on things this time!
The conference presentations are, in a word, disappointing. The focus this year is largely around “exit strategies” and “social mobile”. This makes some sense because that is where the biggest money is right now in the game industry, but the truth is that unless you are at a company that is already playing at that level, it’s too late to get in on the feeding frenzy. So much of this information is largely irrelevant to guys like me who just focus on making quality games that aren’t a farmville clone or a micro-transaction fermium thing. And while it’s entirely possible to “pivot” (this year’s buzz word) into social mobile, I find making games like that to be a real drag, and am focusing my efforts into other markets with my company Well Played Games. There is a really strong audio track this year, which is great to see, and there is still plenty of good info to dig out of some of the talks, but the clear value in this years conference for me is almost exclusively in meeting with people.
On Monday night I had the opportunity to see the first title from Bootsnake Games being shown at the Seattle Indie Expo. Bootsnake was formed by some friends I used to work with at Gas Powered Games. It was great to finally play their game and see them showing it in public! Great showing guys!
And finally, I closed my day today at the Game Audio Alliance mixer, where I had a BLAST! Thanks to all of them for the super cool time! Game Audio Alliance and SoundRangers are both great services run by some of the coolest guys I’ve met. It’s wonderful to see things working out so well for them.